In some types of wireless communication networks, mobile stations will report a parameter called a Channel Quality Index (CQI) to the associated base station that is controlling communications within the network. Based at least in part on the CQI values thus received, the base station can select a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) for one or more mobile stations that represents a tradeoff between higher throughput and higher failure rates of the received signals. When the mobile stations are sharing multiple sub-channels, as they are with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) techniques, each mobile station can report a separate CQI value for each sub-channel. It is generally impractical for every mobile station to report on every sub-channel, so each mobile station may report on only a few of the sub-channels, typically the sub-channels for which it detects the best CQI value. However, for the base station this practice can result in too few, or no, CQI reports on some sub-channels (under-reporting), making it difficult for the base station to select an appropriate MCS for that sub-channel. Similarly, this practice can also result in too many reports on other sub-channels (over-reporting), wasting resources by transmitting more information than is necessary to select an appropriate sub-channel.